Featuring William Howard Taft
Previously on Taft’s Treaties
Time: 1912
Place: The White House
The treaties go further by providing for the creation of a Joint High Commission, to which shall be referred, for impartial and conscientious investigation, any controversy between this Government, on one hand, and Great Britain or France, on the other hand, before such a controversy has been submitted to an arbitral body from which there is no appeal.
Showing posts with label Taft's Treaties. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Taft's Treaties. Show all posts
Monday, August 4, 2014
Sunday, August 3, 2014
A Step Towards World Peace
Featuring William Howard Taft
Introduction on Taft’s Treaties
William Howard Taft is the only man in history who served as both President of United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. This essay by him could have been written by his two great opponents in the 1912 elections, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. World War I was just around the corner; World War II a couple of decades in the future; the Cold War and the other wars further out still. The child-like faith in treaties such as this seems almost quaint now. Also sad. Would that this optimism have been justified by subsequent events. And now, William Howard Taft.
Time: 1912
Place: The White House
Later generations will doubtless note, as one of the main manifestations of our present age, its progress in international arbitration, in the substitution of justice for force as the means of deciding disputes between nations. On March 7, 1912, the United States Senate, after months of argument, finally agreed to ratify two arbitration treaties which President Taft had arranged with England and France. True, the Senate, before thus establishing the treaties, struck out their most far-reaching article, an agreement that every disagreement whatsoever should be referred to a Joint High Commission. Without this clause the treaties still leave a bare possibility of warfare over questions of "national honor" or "national policy"; but practically they put an end to war forever as between the United States and its two great historic rivals.
Introduction on Taft’s Treaties
William Howard Taft is the only man in history who served as both President of United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. This essay by him could have been written by his two great opponents in the 1912 elections, Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. World War I was just around the corner; World War II a couple of decades in the future; the Cold War and the other wars further out still. The child-like faith in treaties such as this seems almost quaint now. Also sad. Would that this optimism have been justified by subsequent events. And now, William Howard Taft.
Time: 1912
Place: The White House
Later generations will doubtless note, as one of the main manifestations of our present age, its progress in international arbitration, in the substitution of justice for force as the means of deciding disputes between nations. On March 7, 1912, the United States Senate, after months of argument, finally agreed to ratify two arbitration treaties which President Taft had arranged with England and France. True, the Senate, before thus establishing the treaties, struck out their most far-reaching article, an agreement that every disagreement whatsoever should be referred to a Joint High Commission. Without this clause the treaties still leave a bare possibility of warfare over questions of "national honor" or "national policy"; but practically they put an end to war forever as between the United States and its two great historic rivals.
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